


Walking After Midnight (Searching For You)

by TurtleTotem



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a birthday present for <a href="zimothy.tumblr.com">Zimothy</a>, following her prompt:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>Charles likes to talk walks around his apartment complex late at night when he gets caught up with homework and over stressed. Also, maybe, because he likes to lurk a little bit on the insomniac from A32 who sits on his patio/blacony at odd hours with headphones and a cigarette. One day he’ll muster up the courage to talk to him - preferably during daylight.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking After Midnight (Searching For You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zimothy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimothy/gifts).



> [Song link for the Thursday section.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdP3nZMZQbs)

MONDAY

Charles is proud of his apartment. He picked it out himself, decorated it himself, pays for it himself out of his allowance. His mother and stepfather, if they ever bothered to find out anything in particular about it, would be appalled at it, and he’s proud of that, too.

Not that it’s a  _bad_ neighborhood. It’s safe enough. His neighbors are very nice people. But they’re mostly fellow students, waitresses, secretaries, construction workers. He’s pretty sure the guy in A32 works in a scrapyard.

It amuses Charles to think of his mother falling over in a dead faint at the realization that the foyer sports a linoleum floor and  _not a single chandelier_.

Well, it’s amusing in theory. The reality of his mother is considerably less so, generally, and especially when Charles’s little sister is sobbing to him on the phone while Mother and Kurt shout at each other in the background, to a soundtrack of alarming thuds and breaking glass.

“When can I come live with you?” Raven whispers, though he knows she knows the answer.

_“—not my fault you’re such a lush—”_

_“Oh, my fault, everything’s my fault—”_

“Soon, sweetheart.” Charles closes his eyes, tries to keep his voice steady. “All the paperwork’s in place. Just a few more months.”

“Almost a  _year._ ”

“It won’t be that long. I’ll get you down here as early in the summer as I can.”

Raven doesn’t actually have the grades to start college two years early. Charles had charmed, bribed, and subtly threatened a half-dozen people to get her in. He doesn’t even care if he goes to jail for it.

Speaking of jail — once he gets off the phone with Raven, once he’s staring down at the  _insane_  pile of homework resulting from the  _insane_ sampling of classes from three courses of study (genetics, psychology, and teaching), his lovely little apartment starts to feel suddenly like it’s contracting around him. It hits him this way sometimes — a lot of times — and he knows the only cure is to get  _out_ for a bit.

It gets cold in November, even in Florida, so he shrugs on a coat and gloves before he steps outside.

Relief is immediate. The air is cold and clear as glacial run-off, and the apartment complex is a dream-like maze of lengthening purple shadows and gold-glowing streetlights. He can hear a faint thumping of bass and children shouting, but it’s all far away, like a memory.

He starts walking, tell himself he’s not going anywhere in particular, telling himself it’s perfectly inevitable, that’s all, that he’s going to eventually walk by apartment A32.

And when he gets there, A32 is, of course, on his tiny concrete patio, with only a turtleneck against the rising chill, wearing headphones and gazing intently at the chessboard laid out before him. As always, he’s alone, the board set onto a Lazy Susan so he can play both sides.

He’s  _gorgeous_ , the guy in A32, with long agile hands and the kind of broad-shoulders-tapered-waist combination that isn’t supposed to exist naturally. The sight of him, nodding his head to music only he can hear, a lock of hair inevitably falling into his eyes, never fails to steal Charles’s breath.

Not that he’s stalking the man or anything. He just takes a lot of walks. And the apartment complex isn’t that large, so inevitably he ends up walking by A32. And when he does, it’s only natural to notice an attractive young man, his age or nearabouts, playing chess or working on junk-metal sculptures or just listening to music, eyes closed, rocking just a little back and forth…

Always alone.

For all Charles knows, of course, the man goes to parties with his thirteen closest friends in the wee hours of the morning. But during his walks, anywhere from dusk to midnight, he’s never seen the man with any sort of companion, not once.

Is he a student? Dropped into a new place, like Charles, saddled with insane amounts of work that leave him no time to make friends? Is he socially awkward, like Charles, overenthusiastic and overthinking it, the most ridiculously cheesy things falling out of his mouth without consulting his brain?

Charles could speak to him. Doesn’t have to just walk past, night after night. He could break the ice. It wouldn’t have to be awkward.  _Hullo, I’m your neighbor. I like chess, if you want to play against someone for a change. Does that sound creepy? Does it sound like I’ve been watching him?_

_He’s probably straight, you know. That’s all right, we could just be friends. It’d be nice to have even a friend. Maybe we could be friends for a while, get to know each other, and then maybe, I mean it’s college, people experiment…_

_This is creepy. I’m being a creeper._

He watches A32 move a black pawn against a white bishop, turn the board and take the pawn with the white queen.

_Hullo, I’m your neighbor. I like chess._  

_What if he’s always alone because he likes it that way?_

He bites his lip and walks away.

TUESDAY

His shift at the scrapyard has been long and exhausting, his boss more than usually evil, but Erik is energized when he gets home, excited about the broken pieces of telescope he found today and what they’re going to look like on his latest sculpture. He satisfies his stomach with a few mouthfuls of chicken sandwich, then wrestles a double armload of scrap metal outside onto the patio table and gets to work.

He could work on it inside, of course — has to, when it rains — but he prefers the outdoors, where there’s airflow and sunlight. There’s also noise, children playing and couples shouting and cars driving by, but that’s what headphones are for.

This sculpture began as a lamp and now looks something, perhaps, like a mobile or a Tilt-a-Whirl, rings of seemingly random junk orbiting the central post. Erik isn’t sure yet what the sculpture is trying to say, but he thinks he’s getting closer. The pieces of telescope, collapsible segments and scratched, foggy lenses, they’re important, they’re definitely part of it…

He works for hours in an altered state of wrenches and solder and German opera, dimly aware of the shadows on the metal changing as the sun sinks and is replaced by the streetlamp a few yards away.

Finally, he has at least one piece — a broken fragment of lens, gleaming dully and razor sharp — exactly where it’s supposed to be, and two more that might or might not still look right tomorrow. He leans back, wipes November-chilled sweat from his forehead, and takes a swallow from the long-forgotten bottle of water on the edge of the patio.

_What am I doing,_ he wonders, not for the first time.  _What is this ever going to get me. I spend so much money, so much time, and what do I have at the end of it? Hunks of scrap metal. I work a crap job for crap pay and use most of it to support a meaningless hobby. No family, no friends. Playing chess against myself. Is this what they wanted for me?_

What does it matter what his parents wanted? They’re not  _here,_ are they?

He leans his forehead against the water bottle for a moment, eyes closed. When he opens them again, That Guy is walking by again.

The guy with the coat that’s too expensive and eyes that are too bright for this neighborhood, the guy who walks around this dump looking at it like it’s interesting and beautiful, like maybe even scrap metal could be interesting and beautiful, the guy who so often looks on the verge of stopping, smiling, speaking… but never does.

Tonight he actually pauses, eyes lighting up as they fall on Erik’s lamp-telescope sculpture, pauses and opens his mouth—

—then meets Erik’s eyes and falters, bites back whatever he might have said, turns it into a mere polite nod and presses onward. He has better things to do, one supposes, than talk to someone like Erik.

Then again, who doesn’t?

WEDNESDAY

Charles’s psychology paper is due at midnight, and he’s proud of himself for hitting “send” with nine entire minutes to spare. He’s done it. It’s left him with a raging headache, eyes that won’t quite focus, and enough Red Bull in his system to keep him up until dawn (a slight dosage miscalculation), but he’s done it.

The moment he steps outside, his head eases. He just stands there a moment, drinking in the cold air, letting his neck and shoulders relax. He needs to sleep. He knows he won’t sleep, but he needs to sleep. If the universe won’t let him sleep, it can at least let him stare creepily at A32 for a while.

But when he gets there, the little patio is empty.

_Dammit, Universe, I thought we had a deal_.

He supposes it’s not unreasonable, after all, for the man to be in bed at midnight. It probably means he’s a sane, normal person, unlike Charles, and — wait. Is that a light?

There’s a light on in the window, and if he makes his eyes focus, Charles can see, in a series of horizontal slices through the blinds, the bedroom of A32.

The room is warmly lit by a bedside lamp, and A32 is in bed, propped against the headboard with a huge book — a photo album? — open on his lap. The room looks pretty sparsely decorated, but Charles can make out an overflowing bookshelf, a few interesting metal shapes, and a framed poster of the Golden Gate Bridge. A32, sprawled on top of a nubbly-with-age green comforter, is wearing loose grey pajama pants and a white wifebeater that makes Charles’s mouth go dry.

_Okay, no, this truly is creepy, you’re looking through the man’s windows in the middle of the night. You are not this person. Turn around and go home._

And he would’ve, honestly, except that’s the moment he realizes the man is crying.

No dramatic sobs; in fact he’s nearly expressionless, gleaming lines trailing down his face without fanfare. He runs an unsteady finger down a page in the album, as if trying to touch the lost subject of a photograph. He looks lost and empty and Charles wants to hold him, wants to be that person in this man’s life, a source of comfort and happiness. In  _anyone’s_ life, really.

There’s Raven, he tells himself. But so far it seems like the best he can do for Raven is offer hope for the future, not comfort for the present.

But anyway he certainly isn’t that person for the man in A32, they don’t even know each other’s names, they’re not acquainted at all, and Charles shouldn’t be here. Resolutely, he turns around and walks back toward his own apartment.

But he can’t get his mind to leave the window of A32. Who was in those photographs, that he misses so very much? Parents, grandparents, a lost lover? Where are they? What happened to them?

It takes Charles several minutes to realize that, in addition to sympathy, he’s also feeling a strange envy toward A32. He has no photographs of happier times to cry over. This, now, this time in his life when he’s finally free of his parents’ misery and violence, this is the happier time. Though not, please God, the  _happiest_.

_I want to do it right._

The realization rocks him back on his feet, leaves him stock-still on the sidewalk within sight of his own door. It’s the coalescence, he realizes, of a hundred nebulous feelings and passing thoughts over the last several years.  _My own family. I want to_ have  _a family, a whole nest of little people and big people who love each other and take care of each other, and unlike my mother I’ll do it_ right.  _Show them — the children, the ones I adopt, the ones with no one to love them and nowhere to go — show them they’re all special and marvelous, no matter what their mother shouted at them when she was drunk._

It would be better with a partner, someone at his side, supporting each other, protecting each other. Someone, maybe, who’s been just as alone as Charles is, someone with broad shoulders and dexterous hands, who looks amazing in a wifebeater…

Charles shakes his head and resumes moving toward his door.  _Go to bed, boy,_ he tells himself,  _and see if any of this makes sense when the Red Bull wears off._

But he’s almost certain it will.

THURSDAY

Erik takes a break from German opera on Thursday night and plugs an old cassette tape of his father’s into his headphones. He twists a small rusty fanblade into place on the sculpture, letting the low-fi richness of Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline wash through him. He can remember listening to this tape in the car with his father, back when the world made sense. Back before a druglord named Sebastian Shaw put out a hit on a suburban couple who didn’t even realize they’d witnessed the elimination of one of Shaw’s rivals.

From the time of Shaw’s arrest when he was ten, to the man’s execution when he was seventeen, he was Erik’s obsession. Erik is certain he knows more about the case than any detective, lawyer, or judge.

When Shaw was executed, Erik sat front and center behind the observation glass, and looked him in the eye the whole time.

And when the man who had killed his parents was dead, Erik did not feel a single bit better. He was still bitter and angry and empty, and aging out of foster care with nothing left in life to look forward to.

Erik forces that out of his mind now, narrows his perceptions to the cool night air, the metal in his hands, the music. It’s Simon and Garfunkel now, a joint favorite of his parents’, something he remembers the three of them singing along with at the top of their lungs on long trips.

_I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told  
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles,_

_Such are promises.  
All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear  
And disregards the rest, hmmmm_

_When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy  
In the company of strangers  
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin’ scared, laying low,   
Seeking out the poorer quarters, where the ragged people go,  
Looking for the places only they would know._

Erik lets his eyes fall closed, feels his head tip back as the nonsense syllables of the chorus kick in. He hasn’t heard this song in so many years but he still remembers every word, and tonight there’s something about it that just hooks deep into him, dragging something painful to the surface.

_In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade  
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him  
‘Til he cried out in his anger and his shame  
“I am leaving, I am leaving,” but the fighter still remains._

He’s singing along now, he can feel it in his throat but he can’t hear himself over the headphones, and it’s not until halfway through the last set of “lie lie lie’s” that it occurs to him anyone might be observing him.

He opens his eyes and finds That Guy standing only a few feet away, wide-eyed, mouth slightly open.

They both jerk, yelp in surprise. Erik claws the headphones off, hot humiliation sweeping over his skin. “Sorry. I - I thought I was alone.”

“You’re not,” That Guy says hoarsely. Clears his throat, musters a shy, embarrassed smile —  _gorgeous_. “I mean. In an apartment complex this crowded, who’s ever alone, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Erik mutters absently, fiddling with his tape player so he doesn’t have to look at the man.

That Guy shifts his weight a moment, finally says, “Aren’t you cold?”

“I am,” Erik realizes. As usual, he’s been out here in the falling dark without a coat, and it’s getting too late in the year for that. “I think I’ll go on inside.” He gathers up walkman, sculpture, and metal pieces in an inelegant armful, gives That Guy a polite nod and retreats.

Inside, back against the door, he scolds himself.  _Why did you run away? You’ve been_  wishing  _That Guy would talk to you. Under less embarrassing circumstances, sure, but work with what you’re given._

Oh, what does it matter. It’s probably better to keep eyeing the man from afar than commit horrific conversation at him and never see him again.

But it had almost seemed, hadn’t it, that the Guy was not entirely displeased with what he’d seen? Or is he projecting that? Just because Erik thinks That Guy looks intriguing and delectable doesn’t at all mean the sentiment is returned.

Erik sets his things down on the floor and goes to the window. He can still see That Guy, walking back toward the way he usually comes. He’s walking slowly — tired?

It isn’t really any warmer in the apartment than it was outside. Probably because Erik’s been keeping the thermostat down, trying to save on his heating bill. If someone else lived here with him, someone to share the bills, it would be so much warmer.

It’s a one-bedroom apartment. They’d have to share more than the bills.

And what if they did share more than the bills? What if he had someone, someone bright and happy, someone to build a family with, someone who wanted the same things Erik wants?

He watches That Guy put his key in a door. He’s never realized the man lives so close. Erik can see lights come on, a silhouette moving from window to window.

Picking up the telescope lens is just an experiment, he tells himself, to see if’s still clean enough to see through — though why that would matter for the sculpture he doesn’t dare to wonder — and That Guy’s windows just happen to be in his line of sight.

The world reels for a moment, an incomprehensible wheel of colors, but he steadies the lens and suddenly he’s in That Guy’s living room.

There’s actual art on the walls of the living room — something abstract in shades of blue and something else with clean, delicate Asian lines — and a bowl of withered fruit on the coffee table. There are books everywhere, in stacks or open face-down or nested in a pile of papers. That Guy has thrown off his coat and gloves and is sprawled across a pillowy dove-gray couch, looking tired and sad. 

He twitches suddenly, pulls a phone from his pocket. The voice on the other end makes his face soften, lips tilting into a half-smile. Girlfriend, perhaps. Soon he’s on his feet, laughing and gesturing wildly with his free hand as he paces the room, animated and beautiful. Erik could watch him forever. 

He imagines coming home to someone like that. On good days, Erik could slip up behind him, put his arms around his waist and see how long he can nibble the man’s ear before it derails his train of thought. On bad days, he might kiss Erik’s forehead and stroke his hair, hold him and reassure him and tell him silly jokes until he cracks a smile again.

_While I’m fantasizing, how about a winning lottery ticket and a pony?_

Erik throws down the telescope lens and goes to bed, shivering under the covers for hours before he can fall asleep.

FRIDAY

Charles stands at the front door and dithers.

_He probably doesn't want to ever see me again. I obviously embarrassed him. Who wouldn't be embarrassed, to come out of such a private moment and find some stranger gawping at them?_

Though he doesn't know how he could be expected to do anything but gawp, when the man had  _that voice_ and  _that face,_ when surely the angels in their heavenly choirs couldn't look that holy and transported when they sang.

_I could apologize, maybe, for staring? Or would that only make things more awkward?_

But even this vague idea of something to say emboldens him, gives him the courage to open the door and step out into the night chill. And after all, he's just taking a walk. He doesn't  _have_ to walk by A32 at all.

He takes a roundabout route, trying to think about his studies, or about Raven's phone call last night -- her re-take of the SATs had gone so well that she now qualified for a scholarship, no longer dependent on their parents' approval, or at least financial support, to start school with Charles in the fall. Maybe when Raven moves in, he'll stop needing these long walks, stop spending inappropriate amounts of time staring at a stranger. Maybe.

Raven moving in won't make A32 any less gorgeous, though, or any less compelling in his loneliness. Whatever it is exactly that makes Charles feel so connected to the man, he doubts spending time with his sister will help much.

Charles walks for forty-five minutes before finally letting his feet wander toward A32.

_He may not be there,_ he thinks, and doesn't even know which outcome to hope for.

But he  _is_ there, without headphones this time, his eyes unfocused but aimed at the chessboard on the Lazy Susan.

Charles nearly turns and flees. Without even knowing it, he realizes now, he'd made up his mind to talk to A32 tonight,  _really_ talk. And it might change nothing and it might change everything, and he's afraid to find out which.

But then A32 glances up at him, meets his eyes, and it's too late to back out now.

Charles smiles -- doesn't even have to try hard for it, because  _he's about to talk to A32_ \-- rubs an awkward hand through his hair. "Hullo." He waves vaguely at the chessboard. "Would you like a partner?"

The man stares at him, glances at the chessboard and back. "Yes," he says at last. "Yes, I would very much like to have a partner."

Charles takes a seat, heart fluttering as the man resets the chess pieces. "I'm Charles Xavier," he says, holding out his hand.

"Erik Lehnsherr."

They shake hands, and it feels like the sealing of a pact.

 

TUESDAY

For a moment, when Charles wakes, he's not sure where he is.

Then his eyes focus on the fascinating orbital amalgamation of Erik's latest sculpture, and he smiles into the pillow. He's in the bedroom of apartment A32.

The other side of the bed is empty, but still warm; Charles turns over and sees Erik digging through the scattered clothes on the floor. He straightens with a victorious "ha!", holding up the boxer-briefs Charles so delightedly divested him of last night -- this morning, really, since it had been after midnight. By a few seconds.

_"We can't possibly sleep together until we've known each other more than three days,"_ Charles had said, and the two of them had sat down to watch the clock.

"Good morning," Charles calls, his voice blurry with sleep, and Erik, pulling up the boxers, turns to grin at him. Charles has decided he adores Erik's grin -- it's wide and toothy and sometimes positively frightening. Especially when Erik is purely, unselfconsciously overjoyed, which he finally got to see last night, and that's when Charles likes it best.

"Good morning," Erik says, and crosses the room to give him a kiss.

"Mmmm." Charles puts his full attention into the kiss, tugging Erik back with a small noise of protest when he tries to pull away. Chuckling into Charles's mouth, Erik lets himself be dragged down onto the bed and mauled for a few minutes.

"Charles," he says when his mouth is finally free for a moment, "if you'll let me go, I was going to make coffee, maybe some pop-tarts..."

Charles, kissing a line down Erik's beautiful bare chest, pauses. "Those chocolate marshmallow pop-tarts?"

"Of course."

After a long moment of consideration, Charles reluctantly pulls back. "All right. Be quick, though."

"Aren't you coming?"

"No, I'll stay here and be waited upon, thanks." Charles pulled the covers back over himself with a loud  _Brrr!_  "I thought we talked about your turning the thermostat up."

"Sorry, forgot."

"How can you forget something like that? Especially when you're walking around in your underwear. Aren't you cold?"

Erik pauses in the act of getting off the bed, and turns toward Charles with a thoughtful expression. He smiles, gently this time, and leans forward to kiss Charles again. "No, actually," he says softly, "I'm not cold at all."

~~end~~


End file.
